UK immigration are to open their ePassport gates to selected Passport holders from Summer 2019. This will allow certain citizens to access the e-gates at airports in the United Kingdom, currently only available to people from the UK and EU.
Finally, there is some good news from the whole Brexit debacle, though it’s only going to be good news for countries outside of the UK and Europe. This is definitely a political decision to show that Great Britain will be open for business in the future.
Who Will UK Immigration Give Access To?
The Australians are already rejoicing with the Australian High Commission in London tweeting the news earlier today. As an Australian, I remember with much hatred the two hour queue at Passport control when I first entered the UK in 2005. Not fun after a 13 hour flight!
https://twitter.com/AusHouseLondon/status/1056967432009629696
Other countries on the UK Immigration friends list will be New Zealand – which usually comes in a package deal with Australia – the United States, Canada and Japan.
What Does It Mean?
Passengers arriving in the UK and using the electronic Passport gates have vastly reduced queues compared to other foreign nationals. This means that citizens of Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and Japan will also be able to take advantage of this.
These people also don’t need to complete landing cards, which is an additional annoyance removed from the equation. Hopefully this will also extend to the new countries.
Overall Thoughts
Apart from moving house, my next most despised task is waiting in a queue at immigration after a long flight. It is truly one of the worst things in the world. Any way this can be reduced or avoided is fine with me.
When I became a citizen of the EU, my travel times improved remarkably, as I was no longer using my Australian Passport on the continent. Streamlining this part of the process should be high on the agenda now we have the technology to do it.
What do you think of this announcement? Will it make a difference to you? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Toby Melville, Reuters, via ABC News in Australia.
You may want to reset your expectations here As a Brit who travels in and out of Heathrow (and other London airports) on a regular basis I can assure you that the ePassport gates are not everything they are cracked up to be. For one they are not AUTOMATIC. There is still a human being sitting behind each one, manually overseeing people passing through. This is why you often find many of the ePassport gates closed. If they want to open 6 gates, they still need 6 people to man them. If they open 12 then then need 12 people… Read more »
I completely understand where you’re coming from. The Brits have long complained about the immigration queues and I’ve seen stories on the BBC News about delays on arrival back into the country at certain times of the year. It really should not happen! Even so, it will be a notable difference for the citizens of the five countries concerned, where the delays are routine rather than an exception. Perhaps if the UK is wanting to show an “open for business” face to the world, they’ll actually staff these gates properly to save face with the foreign people. What I will… Read more »
And if the e-gate does not work you have then to join the UK queue which is managed by 1 immigration officer, so is usually quite long. You also get non EU people in it who did not understand the split and saw a slightly shorter queue to join. They often dont speak much English so it can take time to deal with them
Yes, that’s understandable. Cross fingers everything works 🙂